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Obligations All Around

As Congress awaits a report from Kenneth Starr, potentially covering everything from the Whitewater affair to the Lewinsky affair and the possible obstructions of justice that might link the two, the President's predicament is really our predicament.

During this period of anticipation, we must come to terms with a basic truth about our Constitution. That document, when courageously enforced by an independent judiciary, is wonderfully designed to protect the rights and prerogatives of individuals against government, of the state and Federal governments against each other, and of the three Federal branches in clashes over the separation of powers. But no document can guarantee the wise or even the responsible exercise of the governmental powers whose boundaries it defines.

Thus when grave abuses of Presidential power are unmistakable, the impeachment process is available to permit the wrongdoer's removal for ''high crimes and misdemeanors.'' But what happens when the alleged abuses center on conduct that most people view as none of the public's business -- and when the only crimes consist of efforts to keep that conduct secret? Then, it seems inevitable that impeachment and removal will strike many as disproportionate responses.

In such circumstances, because the courts have held that they cannot police the impeachment process, lawmakers -- and, in turn, all Americans -- are left to struggle with the question of how to proceed.

At a minimum, we will have to pay close attention to the precise evidence of Presidential wrongdoing. But beyond that, we will have to assess whether the misconduct, if clearly proved, fatally undermines our ability to trust the only official elected to lead the entire nation -- the distinguishing feature of an impeachable, as opposed to an ordinary, offense.

That trust, on issues as varied as Social Security reform and missile attacks on terrorists, is indispensable to any President's ability to manage crises or seize opportunities, to dispel crippling doubts or inspire cooperative efforts. The Constitution obviously cannot secure such trust. On the shoulders of Government officials -- from Mr. Starr, the independent counsel, to members of the House and Senate -- falls the weighty responsibility of doing nothing that needlessly exacerbates the mistrust and cynicism so likely to paralyze our country.

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Senators like Dan Coats of Indiana and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, for example, owe it to the nation not to make (even if they later retract) baseless accusations that the President's military choices might have been calculated to distract the public, as both did after the missile strikes in the Sudan and Afghanistan. Ordinary citizens might be excused for indulging in such speculation; our elected representatives have a duty to act more responsibly.

Similarly, members of the House and Senate, who will soon receive the Starr report, have a duty to set partisan or personal considerations aside as they weigh questions of impeachment or censure. If removal from office is called for, shrinking from that verdict to avoid having to run against an incumbent President Gore in 2000 would be as wrong as pressuring a President to resign on a pretext of impeachable offenses when the true intent is to undermine the party in power or teach a moral lesson.

Finally, if the independent counsel has grounds for a finding of potentially impeachable conduct, he has a duty to report those grounds at once to the House, rather than delay until it is too late for Congress to act before the November elections. Perhaps Mr. Starr will choose a slow pace in an understandable, if self-serving, effort to dot every ''i'' and cross every ''t.'' Perhaps he will be intent on taking a detour through the courts to compel the President to testify to sexual details that he has resisted describing -- details that, even if relevant to claims of perjury, are surely irrelevant to the larger question of whether the 1996 election should be undone.

Either approach would be a disservice to all Americans, for the limbo in which the nation is placed as it awaits Mr. Starr's report is corrosive and potentially disabling. As the prospect of an impeachment report dangles overhead, all of us are plagued by its shadow; like the threat of Damocles' sword, the harm that prospect causes stems less from what may happen when it falls than from what is bound to happen while it hangs.

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A version of this op-ed appears in print on August 26, 1998, on Page A00021 of the National edition with the headline: Obligations All Around. Today's Paper|Subscribe